Male entrepreneurs tend to enjoy an advantage in securing traditional venture capital, but common gender biases appear to work in women’s favor when it comes to crowdfunding, recent research suggests.

Acting on a common societal stereotype that women are more trustworthy, funders clicking through projects on crowdfunding sites seem to prefer early-stage, female-led ventures, according to researchers from the Louisiana State University, Indiana University and Suffolk University business schools.

“Prior research in formal venture capital settings demonstrates that investors tend to have a funding bias against women. However, in crowdfunding – wherein a ‘crowd’ of amateur investors make relatively small investments in new companies – our empirical observations reveal a funding advantage for women,” they wrote in the Journal of Business Venturing.